DC Comics: Homage Comics (RED)
Paul Moses is a retired agent of the CIA, formerly working in "foreign acquisitions". Living in a secluded area, his human contacts are limited to pleasant phone calls to his handler (who desires what she believes to have been Moses' type of work) and letters to a niece who lives in England. Michael Beesley, the newly politically appointed Director of the CIA, is taken to Room R as part of his initiation, where he learns of Moses' existence and the full extent of his activities. Disgusted by what he has seen, and fearing public reaction should any of those secrets leak out, he orders the assassination of Moses. A three man hit-team is sent to Moses' residence and he kills them, recognizing the pattern of the attack and realizing his death has been sanctioned. He calls his handler only to learn that she has been transferred. He informs the Agency that his status has changed from Green to Red before leaving his house and going on the hunt. RED (movie 1) Frank Moses (Bruce Willis), a former black-ops CIA agent, is retired and living a quiet life in a Cleveland suburb. However, Frank feels lonely and often chats on the phone with Sarah Ross (Mary-Louise Parker), a customer service agent who works for the GSA pension office in Kansas City. He creates opportunities to talk to her by tearing up his pension checks and calling her to say they had never arrived. His life is disrupted when a six-person hit squad raids his house in the middle of the night. Frank handily kills the entire squad. Knowing they have tapped his phone, he goes to Kansas City to protect Sarah. She refuses to go, so he binds and gags her with duct tape and she becomes Frank's reluctant companion, while he tries to find out who is trying to kill him, and track down his old associates for help. Meanwhile, CIA agent William Cooper (Karl Urban) is assigned to hunt and kill Frank. Frank first goes to New Orleans and after leaving Sarah bound and gagged in their hotel room, he meets with his terminally ill mentor Joe Matheson (Morgan Freeman), living in a retirement community. Joe tells Frank that the same hit squad was also responsible for the murder of a reporter for The New York Times. Sarah manages to break free but is rescued by Frank when another agent, posing as a police officer, tries to drug her. Cooper attacks them but Frank tricks the police, so that the police arrest Cooper, which gives them time to escape. The two head to New York City and find clues left behind by the deceased reporter, which leads them to a hit list. They then track down Marvin Boggs (John Malkovich), also a former black ops agent and a paranoid conspiracy theorist, to provide more information. Marvin tells them that the names on the list are all connected to a 1981 secret mission in Guatemala in which Frank and Marvin participated, and that one person, Gabriel Singer (James Remar), is still alive. The trio track down Singer, who tells them that the mission involved extracting a person from a village and that everybody on the list has been killed to silence them. Singer is then assassinated by a helicopter-borne machine-gunner, and the team escapes as Cooper closes in. Frank goes to ex-Russian secret agent Ivan Simanov (Brian Cox), offering him a favor in exchange for his help in infiltrating CIA headquarters. Along with Sarah, Frank gets inside and the records keeper (Ernest Borgnine) - who has much respect for Frank - simply hands him the Guatemala file. Frank goes to confront Cooper in his office and the two have a vicious fight. Though Frank was victorious, he is shot by Cooper during his escape. Having escaped an attempt on his life, Joe arrives and helps extract the team. They all hide out in the home of Victoria (Helen Mirren), who treats Frank's wound and - also missing her old life as a wetwork agent - joins the team. After reviewing the file, all the team can figure out is that the only man involved on the reporter's list but not in the file, Alexander Dunning (Richard Dreyfuss), has some way of protecting himself. Joe masquerades as a dictator from an unnamed country and secures a meeting with Dunning, who is an illegal arms dealer. As Victoria waits outside with Sarah to keep watch, Dunning reveals under interrogation that the mission was to extract the now–Vice President Robert Stanton (Julian McMahon), who at the time was a young lieutenant who massacred the village civilians, and that Stanton is trying to erase all the loose ends. At that moment, Cooper and the FBI surround Dunning's mansion. Cooper tries to negotiate Frank's surrender, but Frank tells Cooper about the vice president's treachery. Joe sacrifices himself by pretending to be Frank surrendering, and, as Joe exits the house, he is killed by an unknown sniper. The confusion, as well as Victoria's cover fire, buys the team enough time to escape, but Sarah falls down a slope and is captured. Frank calls Cooper from Cooper's family home and threatens the family if Sarah is harmed, and says that he intends to kill Stanton. The team, along with Ivan, who is Victoria's former lover, infiltrate Stanton's fundraising gala in Chicago and successfully kidnap him despite Cooper's best efforts to stop them. Frank calls Cooper and says he is willing to trade Stanton for Sarah. At the meeting point, Dunning arrives and after a short dialogue shoots Stanton, revealing that he is the mastermind behind the assassinations and that Stanton was merely a pawn. Cooper's boss, Cynthia Wilkes (Rebecca Pidgeon), is also in on the plot. Disgusted with Dunning and Wilkes' greed and corruption, Cooper pretends to go along with handcuffing Frank before shooting Wilkes while Marvin and Victoria kill Dunning's bodyguards, and Frank crushes Dunning's windpipe. Cooper agrees to let Frank and his team go and he is left to sort things out. As they leave the scene, Frank and Sarah are eager to start a new life together. Ivan reminds Frank that he owes Ivan a favor. A few months later, Frank and Marvin are in Moldova, fleeing from Moldovan Army troops with a stolen nuclear device, with Marvin wearing a dress and in a wooden wheelbarrow being pushed by Frank RED 2 While trying to lead a normal life with girlfriend Sarah Ross (Mary-Louise Parker), Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) is approached by Marvin Boggs (John Malkovich), who is afraid that there are people still after them, but Frank dismisses him. After appealing a second time, Marvin drives off but his car explodes. Although Frank does not believe Marvin is dead, Sarah convinces him to go to Marvin's funeral where he delivers a teary-eyed eulogy. After the funeral, a group of government agents approach Frank and take him to be interrogated at a Yankee White Facility. During the interrogation, Jack Horton (Neal McDonough) appears, killing most of the facility's personnel, and tells Frank that he will torture Sarah in order to get information out of Frank. Frank manages to escape with the help of Marvin, who turns out to be alive, and they go on the run with Sarah. Marvin explains that he and Frank are being hunted down because they were listed as participants in a secret operation codenamed Nightshade. The operation was conducted during the Cold War era in order to smuggle a nuclear weapon into Russia piece by piece. Horton has been able to convince the world that Frank and his crew are terrorists and must be stopped. Victoria (Helen Mirren) calls and tells them she has accepted a contract from MI6 to kill Frank. Meanwhile, top contract killer Han Cho-Bai (Lee Byung-hun) is hired by Horton to kill Frank as well. Frank, Marvin, and Sarah travel to Paris to track down a man nicknamed "The Frog" (David Thewlis), in Han's stolen plane, with the Americans and a furious Han on their tails. As they arrive in Paris, they are stopped by Katya (Catherine Zeta-Jones), a Russian secret agent who Frank had a relationship with earlier in his career. Katya is in search of Nightshade as well, and teams up with them to find the Frog. After the Frog flees from them, Frank and Katya catch him and bring him back to his house, where Sarah succeeds in wooing him to help them and prove she is a better girlfriend than Katya. The Frog gives them the key to his security box, which Katya attempts to get from Frank after drugging him, but Marvin anticipated this and had planted a fake key on Frank. He, Frank, and Sarah later find documents in the Frog's security box which point to Dr. Edward Bailey (Anthony Hopkins), a brilliant physicist, as the creator of the bomb involved with Operation Nightshade. They find out that Bailey is still alive, having been held in an asylum for the criminally insane in London for thirty-two years. After arriving by the stolen jet in London, Victoria confronts the trio, but helps to fake their deaths. Victoria then feigns insanity in order to gain access to the asylum. Frank and Victoria meet Bailey, who is hyperactive and does not respond to their questions. After a while, Bailey reveals that the bomb is still in Moscow. They go to Moscow, and after a close call with Han, Bailey comes to the conclusion that he hid the bomb in the Kremlin. They break into the Kremlin, and Bailey locates the bomb, but as they are about to leave, Katya stops them. Frank convinces his former lover to switch to their side. As all are celebrating success, Victoria calls Frank from London and tells him that Bailey was locked up specifically because he wanted to detonate the bomb. Bailey holds Frank at gunpoint and confirms Victoria's message, revealing that he made a deal with Horton and the Americans to leave with the bomb. He then shoots Katya, staging her death at Frank's hands, and leaves. Horton reneges on his deal with Bailey, intending to question him, but Bailey escapes by using a nerve agent he created. Bailey moves to the Iranian embassy in London, and as Frank attempts to follow, Han confronts him, and after a fistfight, Frank asks Han to join sides with him and stop the bomb. Han eventually relents, and they set in place a plan to recapture Bailey and the bomb. Sarah first seduces the Iranian ambassador, then takes him hostage on the pretext of women's rights in Iran. Marvin sets in place a diversion, and the rest come in disguise to "fix" the problem. When they arrive, they discover that Bailey has set the bomb timer off. Bailey kidnaps Sarah and goes to the airport to escape the imminent explosion. Frank, Marvin, Victoria, and Han give chase as they also get chased by embassy guards. After they escape, they arrive at the airport, and Frank saves Sarah from Bailey, but is forced by him to take the bomb off the plane. They reunite with Marvin, Victoria, and Han and wait for their imminent deaths, but the bomb explodes in the air. Frank reveals that he snuck the bomb on the plane in a compartment near the front of the plane. The movie closes with a scene showing Sarah enjoying herself on a mission with Frank and Marvin.